In the current issue

Da Vinci Medal Address
John M. Staudenmaier, SJ, “Welcoming in a Lovely World”

Memorial
Ruth Oldenziel and Johan Schot, “Karen Johnson Freeze, 22 October 1945–19 March 2009”

Karen J. Freeze, “Czechoslovak Theater Technology under Communism: Ambassador to the West”

Essay Reviews
Togo Tsukahara, “Techno-Science and the State in the Japanese Empire: Yang Daqing, Technology of Empire; Janis Miura, Planning for Empire”

Els De Vos, “Socialist Housing in the Eastern Bloc: Lynne Attwood, Gender and Housing in Soviet Russia; Kimberly Elman Zarecor, Manufacturing a Socialist Modernity”

Technology and Culture
April 2012

Czechoslovak Theater Technology under Communism:
Ambassador to the West

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Footnotes
1. Before 1989 only a few scholars presented evidence to the contrary: see Loren R. Graham’s many works, including Science in Russia and the Soviet Union and What Have We Learned about Science and Technology from the Russian Experience? For works by economists, see J. Wilczynski, Technology in Comecon; Friedrich Levcik and Jirí Skolka, East–West Technology Transfer; Helgard Wienert and John A. Slater, East–West Technology Transfer; and Kazimierz Z. Poznanski, Technology, Competition, and the Soviet Bloc in the World Market and “The Environment for Technological Change in Centrally Planned Economies.” Jan Monkiewicz and Jan Maciejewicz, in Technology Exports from the Socialist Countries, analyze the licensing activity of several Soviet Bloc countries; they suggest that sales of Czechoslovak technology were far too low, given the amount of research and development taking place in the country.
2. Typical of general works on technology transfer is N. Mohan Reddy and Liming Zhao’s “International Technology Transfer”; of the 216 works they cite, not a single one has to do with transfer from the Soviet Bloc to the West. Few people had seen the reports by John W. Kiser, “Report on the Potential for Technology Transfer from the Soviet Union to the United States” and “Commercial Technology Transfer from Eastern Europe to the United States and Western Europe.” Kiser also tracked Czech innovations in soft contact lenses and plastic explosives, but he does not include theater technology, such as lighting devices. In a later book, Communist Entrepreneurs, he focused on rule-breaking innovators. See also Karen J. Freeze, “Snapshots of Přestavba,” 173.
3. Until the 1990s systematic study of technological innovation in the former Soviet Bloc was hindered by the lack of archival access. The work edited by Johannes Bähr and Dietmar Petzin, Innovationsverhalten und Entscheidungsstrukturen, which focuses on the two Germanys in the 1960s, and Constructing Socialism by Raymond G. Stokes were pioneering efforts. Sociologist Ivan Tchalakov has examined several Bulgarian innovations, including computer memory storage; see his “Innovating in Bulgaria” and “Technological Innovations and Non-Exchange Economy,” the latter a report for the European Commission Phare program. Valentina Fava has studied the Škoda automobile company in Czechoslovakia in “Socialismo e Taylorism.”
4. See Freeze, “Innovation and Technology Transfer during the Cold War.”
5. “Tensions of Europe: Technology and the Making of Europe” is an open intellectual network of some 200 scholars working on a transnational history of Europe that focuses on technology in society and culture as an agent of change. Although the AAASS 2008 panel took a broader view of technology (beyond achievement and transfer), its participants—Katherine Lebow, Dolores Augustine, Malgorzata Mazurek, and Eagle Glassheim—all represent younger scholars who have a passion for understanding the role of technology in culture and society in cold war Europe. Another example is the project based at the University of Helsinki: “Knowledge Through the Iron Curtain—Transferring Knowledge and Technology in Cold War Europe.”
6. “Scenography” includes everything that creates theatrical space: for example, sets, props, lighting, costumes, and sound. Selected works in English on Svoboda include: Jarka Burian, The Scenography of Josef Svoboda and Leading Creators of Twentieth-Century Czech Theatre, especially chapter 7; Christopher Baugh, Theatre, Performance and Technology, especially chapter 5; and Josef Svoboda, The Secret of Theatrical Space.
7. See the public opinion surveys conducted by G. Jacquemyns and E. Jacquemyns, “L’Exposition de 1958.”
8. Jaroslav Halada, “Czechoslovaks at World Expositions.”
9. On Svoboda’s work, see especially Burian, The Scenography of Josef Svoboda, 77–107, on the innovations associated with Brussels and Montreal and their offshoots. More easily available are Burian’s broader works, Modern Czech Theatre  and Leading Creators of Twentieth-Century Czech Theatre; see also Burian’s article “Josef Svoboda.” On Laterna Magika, see "'Magic Lantern’ Opens in London” (n.a.); and Allen Hughes, “Theater.” See also a collection of texts by Svoboda, program notes from Laterna Magika, and other short pieces, translated from the French by Kelly Morris: Svoboda, Morris, and Erika Munk, “Laterna Magika”; and Burian, “Josef Svoboda and Laterna Magika’s Latest Productions” (in TD&T, which was officially called Theatre Design & Technology until the late 1980s) and “Laterna Magika as a Synthesis of Theatre and Film.” Svoboda left Laterna Magika in the 1960s and returned as director in 1973, serving there until his death in 2002.
10. Svoboda explains in his memoirs that American technology was critical to this production; see The Secret of Theatrical Space, 78–79.
11. Strips of low-voltage lamps on either side of the stage projected narrow, intense beams of light across to one another; as the strips were raised the light wall appeared, like rising waters, to “drown” the crowd onstage.
12. In the fall of 2005 when I interviewed theater scholars in the Faculty of Philosophy at Charles University in Prague, they suggested that I take a look at the Intolleranza production, which, of course, I did not know. For full accounts, see Dean Wilcox, “Political Allegory or Multimedia Extravaganza?” and Harold C. Schonberg, “Opera: Luigi Nono’s ‘Intollerenza [sic] 1960.’”
13. For reviews of the exhibit, see Robert Alden, “Soviet Pavilion at Expo 67 is Overwhelming”; and Bosley Crowther, “Expo 67 and the Exploding Syntax of Cinema.” For later commentaries, see Eva-Marie Kröller, “Expo '67”; and Dane Lanken, “Remember the Magic of Expo 67.” For Svoboda’s description, see The Secret of Theatrical Space, 105–6. The century-old wooden Betlém (crèche) from Třebechovice, in northeastern Bohemia, carved by Josef Probošt, is a complex, room-sized, mechanical tour de force.
14. Kinoautomat was, of course, a film rather than theater innovation. According to Jonathan Randal, in “Czechs Want Film Techniques,” the Czechoslovak state film exporter had sold two Kinoautomats to Canada, and two were “planned” for the United States, in San Antonio and New York. (Perhaps the August 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia aborted these plans?) The article cited the disappointment of the Czechs that they could not see what the Kinoautomat was for themselves. Svoboda, in The Secret of Theatrical Space’s chapter titled “The Exhibition as World Outlook,” 104–9, discusses especially Brussels and Montreal; Laterna Magika is treated in the following chapter, 110–20. For more on Laterna Magika, see Burian, “Laterna Magika as a Synthesis of Theatre and Film,” reflecting early pessimism about the future of the system.
15. Czechoslovakia also won the top prize in 1959 in São Paulo, Brazil, for an exhibit on the development of Czechoslovak stagecraft since 1914, featuring 294 paintings and sketches of sets, costumes, and theater models. The competition, held in conjunction with the Fifth Biennial of Modern Art, also awarded Czech architect František Troster a prize of $1,000 (which was a lot of money for a Soviet Bloc person in those days!) as the best foreign stage designer; see Tad Szulc, “Czechoslovak Theatrical Exhibit Wins Prize at Sao Paulo Biennial.” In 1970, at the world’s fair in Osaka, Japan, the Czechoslovak Pavilion (which included Laterna Magika once again) was visited by 10.5 million people and won several prizes; see Halada and Milan Hlavacka, World Expositions.
16. Full lists of Svoboda’s productions are given in The Secret of Theatrical Space, 127–41.
17. The best introduction to Svoboda’s technology and his philosophy of technology and art is in Burian, “Josef Svoboda.” Burian updates his views thirty years later in Modern Czech Theatre. See also Svoboda’s memoirs The Secret of Theatrical Space, 12–31. Projections are actually part of lighting technology, but they were such a major part of Svoboda’s oeuvre that I consider them to be a separate category.
18. Baugh explains this well in Theatre, Performance and Technology, chapter 7, 143. Svoboda used the piano metaphor for the entire production: “Production space should be a kind of piano, on which it is possible to improvise, to test out any idea whatever, or to experiment with the relationship among various components” (The Secret of Theatrical Space, 20). For a fascinating take on the issue of theatrical space, see Denis Bablet, “Problems of Contemporary Theatre Space.” (Bablet has also written a biography of Svoboda.)
19. Svoboda, The Secret of Theatrical Space, 29–30.
20. This was in response to criticism from Czech and Slovak theater colleagues who did not share his enthusiasm for technological innovation; for accounts of many other, mostly late-twentieth-century Czech theater designers and scenographers, see Joseph E. Brandesky Jr., ed., Czech Theatre Design in the Twentieth Century, which is a collection of essays based on two exhibits: “Metaphor and Irony: Czech Scenic and Costume Design, 1920–1999,” and “Metaphor and Irony 2: František Tröster and Contemporary Czech Theatre Design,” both organized by Ohio State University at Lima. It is accompanied by a CD-ROM of some 140 images, although only somewhat more than a quarter of these are from earlier than 1989; of these, only two depict Svoboda’s work and thirteen depict Tröster’s. Twenty-seven designers are represented altogether, with biographies of each.
21. Svoboda, The Secret of Theatrical Space, 27.
22. They obviously could not simply spray dust into the air, but had to use a substance friendly to the lungs and voices of actors and singers. Svoboda explains how a German engineer in Wiesbaden came to the rescue, with electrostatically charged water vapor; see ibid., 59–60.
23. I do not know whether these devices were patented by Svoboda, the Czechoslovak state, or someone else. Commenting on Svoboda’s lighting innovations in the 1970s, Baugh states that “[m]uch of our admiration of Svoboda’s use of light and projected material stemmed from his ability to produce images of tremendous power and visual integrity. By comparison (at least in the UK in the mid-1970s), our effects had the appearance of watching TV in the daylight!” This was not just due to technology: “[W]e found out that they had on their staff a large number of extremely well-trained follow-spot operators. . . . But instead of the bright crudeness of the Western equivalent, the spots were softly focused and carefully colored. . . . [The dancers] danced all over the stage and were beautifully lit wherever they went. This allowed the projections to achieve a visual power and dominance that we had never seen before. . . . This was only possible because of the high staffing levels and the permanence of that staff who could be trained. In the West follow-spot operators were (and still are) casual staff employed on a contract basis.” See Baugh, Theatre, Performance and Technology (note: the editors were unable to locate the page number for this reference).
24. On the Theatergraph, see František Černý, “Lighting that Creates the Scene and Lighting as an Actor”; and Burian, Leading Creators of Twentieth-Century Czech Theatre, chapters 3 and 8.
25. On Piscator, see Baugh, Theatre, Performance and Technology, chapter 7.
26. Věra Ptáčková, Josef Svoboda.
27. Ibid., 171n23.
28. The Czechoslovak Technical College is now the Czech Technical University, Prague.
29. UMPRŮM (Vysoká škola Umělecko-průmyslová), now called, in English, the Academy of Arts, Architecture, and Design.
30. Baugh confirms this in chapter 5 of Theatre, Performance and Technology.
31. The Czechoslovak government, which was one of the most hard line in the Soviet Bloc, did not welcome Gorbachev, and for good reason—they may have regarded him as the beginning of the end for their regime.
32. As it was, very few people in any of these categories actually defected to the West—a certain tennis player notwithstanding.
33. These four stages are: Národní divadlo (National Theater), Smetanovo divadlo (now the independent Státní opera Praha [State Opera Prague]), Tylovo divadlo (once again, the Estates Theater), and the New Stage of the Národní divadlo, housing Laterna Magika, which is now independent.
34. Baugh, personal communication with author. On his observations on lighting, see note 23 above. See also Glenn M. Loney, “Behind the Soviet Scenes.”
35. See the articles from Theatre Design & Technology, “Teaching Stage Design in the United States, Canada, and Czechoslovakia, 1976” (n.a.); “PQ ’75” (n.a.); and “OISTT Reports on Theatre Training” (n.a.).
36. For a history of the organization, see Joel E. Rubin, “The International Organization of Scenographers and Theatre Technicians.”
37. OISTT was superseded by OISTAT, which describes its mission as follows: “To stimulate the exchange of ideas and innovations, and to promote international collaboration in professions which support live performance”; “To promote the formation of centres in each country in order to achieve these aims”; “To encourage life-long learning among live performance practitioners”; and “To respect the integrity of all cultures and celebrate the diversity as well as the similarities of those who work in support of live performance.” OISTAT has centers, associate members, and individual members in forty-seven countries, with a total of over 20,000 members. The organization in now based in Taiwan. See www.oistat.org (accessed 28 February 2012).
38. Again, Baugh confirms the importance of cross-disciplinary collaboration among people from different disciplines: “I think that this is absolutely crucial to an understanding of [the Czechs’] ability to both effectively ‘invent’ the word scenography, and to be so innovative in creating such a complex 20th-century stage language. And again, it focuses upon people and people working together rather than simply spending a lot of money buying up expensive technologies” (personal communication with author). He goes on to recall that in the early 1990s in London it was easier to raise money for a theater to purchase expensive lighting boards and other equipment, but nearly impossible to raise a much lesser amount of money to employ skilled personnel to operate them.
39. Svoboda, The Secret of Theatrical Space, 14–15.
40. Theater production as an example of “cross-disciplinary product development,” where all the disciplines meet from the beginning to coordinate their visions and possibilities, does not seem to be (or have been) typical in the United States, but this needs verification through research. Accounts of the Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, and Polish scenographers’ visit to the United States in 1972 are in Burian, “Josef Svoboda’s American University Tour, 1972”; and Zenobiusz Strzelecki, Ladislav Vychodil, and Ivan Szabo-Jilek, “Impressions of the U.S.A.”
41. Meyerhold was executed in 1940; see Burian, Leading Creators of Twentieth-Century Czech Theatre, 54–55.
42. Lawrence and Lee were the authors of Inherit the Wind, the dramatization of the Scopes Monkey Trial, a popular play in the USSR; see Loney, “Behind the Soviet Scenes.”
43. They pointed out that lighting was so vital because, in part, Russian theater was “much lighter, structurally. With eight performances a week—and sometimes eight different productions to set up and strike in one week—they have to design for economy, simplicity, flexibility, durability” (ibid., 15). Beyond the scope of this article are their fascinating remarks comparing American theaters with Soviet theaters. For more on Soviet theater design, see Vitaly Gankovsky, “New Directions (Scenographic Quests) in Soviet Theatre”; and V. Krasilnikov, “A Universal Dramatic Theatre in the City of Tula.”
44. Reports on East European theater technology can be found throughout Theatre Design & Technology and other theater journals during the 1970s. Contemporary reviews of productions seen by Westerners both in those countries and in the West attest to the interest that scenographers like Svoboda elicited.
45. For example, the Tensions of Europe network, originally established by the European Science Foundation (www.histech.nl/tensions); CLIOHRES, a European Commission Network of Excellence (www.cliohres.net); the project at the University of Helsinki, “Knowledge Through the Iron Curtain—Transferring Knowledge and Technology in Cold War Europe” (www.helsinki.fi/aleksanteri/kic/project.htm); and the European Science Foundation’s EUROCORES program, “Inventing Europe: Technology and the Making of Europe, 1850 to the Present” (www.esf.org/inventingeurope).
46. The role of theater in the cultures of the Soviet Bloc countries is another, if related topic. In their visit to the USSR (see note 42 above), Lawrence and Lee marveled at the numbers of theaters in Russia and their popularity, “as opposed to the relative lack of interest in the U.S.” Lee said that “[t]hey are hungry for theatre in the Soviet Union. I think it’s because their TV is lousier than ours. And their newspapers aren’t nearly so interesting. Only four pages in Pravda. . . . Seriously, theatre is a kind of substitute for religion. It’s also a reward after a hard day’s work.” Moreover, Lawrence noted why Russians say they prefer theater to television or film: “The latter are like a kiss through glass. Theatre is the real thing!”
47. Steven McElroy, “Illusory Characters with Startling Stage Presence”; Patricia Cohen, “A Lost ‘Boris Godunov’ Is Found and Staged.”

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Bibliography

©2012 by the Society for the History of Technology.